A Year of Deep Listening
I’m pleased to be part of this beautiful tribute to Pauline Oliveros created by Stephanie Loveless and the Centre for Deep Listening (https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu/). The book is now available from MIT Press:
Invisible Institutions:
News from Invisible Institutions Podcast: We are nominated for a Canadian Podcasting Award in the category of Outstanding Documentary. Designing a sonic narrative to support the brilliant storytelling and documentary research of the creator, Megan Linton, was an incredible honour for me.
What’s more, Megan was supportive of my work when I was decidedly not at my peak; I had a brutal eardrum injury that resulted in loss of hearing in my right ear, unpredictable compensation by my brain and other ear, and not only hearing loss but random “artifacts” or bizarre sounds generated by the injury (zipping, record scratch, ringing, etc.). As we go into Season 2, I’m grateful for my hearing in both ears (thanks to successful tympanoplasty) and a chance to learn from all the hard work of Season 1.
http://invisibleinstitutions.com/
C H A O T I C R H Y T H M S.
Here’s a link to my post about composing a piece for the Chaotic Rhythms web installation:
Currently based in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Living in East Van (north).
Helena Krobath is a self-described effective weirdo. She holds an MA in Media Studies from Concordia and a BA in Communications from Simon Fraser University, where she was awarded the Dean’s Convocation Medal for her graduating class. She was born in Matsqui and grew up in Mission and Abbotsford, BC. Her family immigrated from various parts of Eastern Europe to Manitoba and British Columbia in the 1930s and 1950s. She lives in Vancouver, in the unceded and occupied territory of the səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.
Helena takes keen interest in how information is created and communicated, observing places and zones to investigate how infrastructures, sensory tuning, and narrative frameworks co-construct place. Helena is interested in local information systems and engagement with political realities.
Helena’s art practices incorporate radio arts, electroacousic composition, photography, painting and drawing, writing, and live spatial practices such as soundwalking. Helena’s work plays with multidimensional relations between matter, spaces, and entities, exploring the formation of worlds through shifting boundaries.
Helena writes for various contexts, has exhibited video work at the Feminist Media Studio, and co-designed Meh: the Museum of Extratemporal Harkening, an interactive fictional soundwalking experience (!) with Brady Marks, for the Walking Festival of Sound. She regularly collaborates on soundwalks and interactive events with Vancouver New Music and Vancouver Soundwalk Collective and published the Journal of Design and Culture’s first audio-essay in their special issue on COVID-19 (exploring political economic dimensions of “sheltering in place” through changing soundscapes of East Vancouver).
Helena created a 4-channel composition for Chaotic Rhythms (The World is Gone, This is the World), an interactive web installation by Decoy Gallery and composed a fictional/soundscape composition for The Commute (Ghost Story Commute), a psychogeographical sound art series by Arts Assembly. Helena also works on sound design and editing, such as for the Invisible Insitutions podcast and Frank Theatre’s multimedia production, Be-Longing.
Helena has taught workshops on sound, sensory observation, and field recording, including working with Megaphone Magazine writers in a pilot project presenting the Voices of the Street literary anthology in podcast form (release pending); developing audio skills training with members of Our World Language/Nuxalk Radio’s 2020 audio mentorship program; designing/facilitating VIVO’s 2019 podcast construction mentorship telling Vancouver Housing Stories; and supporting environmentally-engaged audio art creation in VIVO’s 2018 mentorship, Still Creek Salmon Sounds. She has given presentations with the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, CiTR 101.9 FM (UBC), the Feminist Media Studio, Vancouver Podcast Festival, and more. She has co-hosted and produced episodes of the Soundscape Show on Vancouver Co-op Radio and volunteers with Vancouver Tenants Union
Contact Me
Available for: project collaboration, communications consulting, educational coaching, creative education, editing, writing, research, and project organizing
Helena.Marie.Krobath[at]gmail[dot]com